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Alberta is facing a labour shortage in the near future. How would you recruit and retain workers to our area?

I am a business man. I have hired up to about 140 people in the shops that we had in Nisku. Somehow we have to make the young people realize that work is not dangerous to their health. We have a big problem with young people not working. You go to any business and that is their main concern, young people do not know how to work. We have to empower the youth somehow. Work is good and honourable. They will succeed and buy their house, buy their car, have a family and afford it.

There are jobs, there are many jobs available. We have to stop the revolving doors in businesses. I was involved with the PC government as a delegate years ago and I think that we have to - and this is something that I really like about the Wildrose Party and this is something I really like myself and I have done it all my life - is to get people to realize that they are the boss. They are paying the wages for everybody. They need to get this concept that 'hey, I am the boss. I am paying.' But what has happened over time is that I think people have given up, our youth especially on politics and politicians and I don't blame them, because I was on the verge of saying that I will never vote again in my life and here I am running.

Being in business since 1977, I know that it is important to work with young people. I have been working with them. I never told them 'go do this,' I worked with them to show them how.

That is one of the biggest first steps in young people, is to say 'you are the boss.' In time when you're working and paying taxes, you're doing the voting, you are the boss and whatever you do now you will reap the benefits in the future.

We are running short of workers because we don't have any children anymore. Not as many, so we definitely have to have a better program in place to bring in foreign workers. Right now there is an issue to bring American workers across, we tried, and there are too many regulations that prevent things and people get discouraged quickly.

We have to remove those barriers. It doesn't matter what race they are, but a lot of the Americans are trained the same way as we are and I am not against other countries either, but they are our neighbours and they have a lot of unemployed workers that would love to come here.

What is your position on the Keystone XL Pipeline? (and the Northern Gateway Pipeline) Do you think the project would add a significant amount of jobs in Alberta?

Yes. I am involved with the oil and gas industry, we manufacture for them. Yes it will create a lot of jobs. There are a lot of misconceptions from 20, 30, 40 years ago, but if you look in the last 10-15 years at how many pipelines have burst, we are always working on the extreme. Like, if this pipeline bursts all of that land is going to be down the tubes. That is never going to happen.

I have worked in the oil patch and have worked on sites where they would spew the garbage out of the ground and it would go all over the place and I would have to work on it afterwards but that kind of stuff has been cleaned up. It is very clean on sites now.

I am totally in favour of this pipeline because we need other markets and when you have other markets it will create a lot of jobs.

Some of companies that I have spoken to are waiting for this to go through because they can manufacture for it. Right now, in Canada, especially Alberta we need to manufacture more, instead of importing, we need to manufacture more and we can. We have the robotics for a lot of stuff and the products can be bettered. We should be pushing that.

Northern Gateway is the one that will go through Prince Rupert. Yes I believe that all of these will create jobs.

The domino effect of these pipelines is huge. We might be working on it here in Alberta but the effects will be felt in Ontario and Quebec and in to the Maritime provinces, the benefits of it.

As a "have" province, should Alberta continue to use its revenues to build up social services, even if it means posting deficits, or should budgets focus on saving for the future, at the expense of social services in the here and now?

Being in business and having gone to a lot of petroleum shows I have spoken to a lot of people about social programs.

A social program is only as good as the taxes coming in. We could have 100 per cent social programs to meet everyone's needs but where is that money going to come from?

I strongly believe that we have to create an environment for business to flourish in Alberta. When that happens there is more companies, more taxes, more labourers, more taxes from them, and the more money that is made the more that we can put in to social services, in to hospitals and all that.

You can't have one without the other, because somebody has to pay and it is always the industry. Some people ask "what are you going to do for labourers?" and I say the best thing anybody can do for labourers is to make sure they have a job. I think when that is established without too many government regulations, where small businesses can flourish - hire people, train more - I have met so many companies in Edmonton and the north in the oil sector, and the things that have been invented, stuff like that should be encouraged, not regulated to death so that people say 'well I'm not staying here I'm going to Saskatchewan or the United States'

We are too regulated here.

You look at other places that have less regulations, like Saskatchewan and the U.S have a lot less, they are pro business and when you are pro-business you get a lot more money to support your social network.

I believe that if we are very careful with spending we can have those social programs now, without going in to deficit. There is one simple lesson I have learned in business; when you make a dollar you can not spend $10. It is simple economics.

I have seen a lot of areas where government is just too big, too many bureaucrats. We have three or four managers for four workers in certain areas that I have seen, in hospitals that is way too much.

In the private sector I think there is one manager for 22 or 24 workers. It is just overkill. I think if we got very efficient we don't have to go in to deficit. There is enough money. Right now Alberta is almost getting record revenue and they are still in a deficit. Like Danielle Smith has said many times, we have to look at projects and see what type of funding we are going to do and work with municipalities so that they know what funding they are going to get every year. Instead of them begging for grants all the time, cause then you are pitting municipality against municipality and that all affects your social programs and deficits and all that.

How would you suggest diversifying our economy so Alberta is not so oil dependent?

You shut Nisku and Leduc down, what are you going to do to replace all those jobs, I have not figured that out. You look at all the promises of all these jobs in manufacturing these windmills, but how many of these windmill farms around the world have been abandoned already? And they are getting rid of them because they are too expensive and they don't produce enough power.

The more of these types of regulations we have the more people are going to move out of the province. We have to stop that. I think we also have to have the workers be more responsible for their actions. Once you've got a good base set up when the government is not interfering then people are free to think of their inventions.

What areas of healthcare need to be improved in order to provide lower wait times, better care and more patient options?

I went to the hospital when my wife broke her wrist and there was a sign that said "stop bullying" so I asked the nurses what that meant, who was bullying them? Is the government who is bullying you? And she said 'no this is about nurses, to stop nurses from bullying other nurses.'

I have seen in my lifetime that certain nurses can't cross one floor to go and see another because they are not allowed on other floors, and stuff like that. I believe that we have to have the mentality that we serve. Anybody that works for the government, I don't care how educated they are they are a servant to the people. I think that has to go all the up from the cleaning people all the way up to the doctors, specialists, everybody. That type of attitude to come in to help change healthcare. Instead of fighting one another, instead of bureaucrats thinking that they are higher than anyone else.We have to look at it as if we are serving the people of Alberta. We cannot get egos, we need to work together and help serve the communities. I think that is one big step in helping solve healthcare. I've been to a lot of hospitals to see how nurses work and after talking to some nurses I did not realize how much bullying there is among nurses. That does not create a very great workforce. There is no efficiency in it. There is a friction that happens. In a hospital you are working all the time. We have to change our attitudes towards each other and how we work and how we treat patients. Patients are there because they are sick, not to be in your way. Doctors are there to serve patients.

In terms of funding, what are the areas in healthcare that need less focus than others?

The super board for one, shouldn't be around. There is a big focus on that when there shouldn't be. It is a big bureaucracy and it shouldn't be done at the lower levels. I heard one doctor say he needed a box of tissue and he had to go to the bureaucrats in the ministers office just to ask if he could get it. You can't work that way, you have to make sure that they can get it locally.

What, if any, are the flaws in the defeated Education Act?

I think what I saw was that the premier and the prime minister were pushing the preamble. I've spoken to lawyers that say the preamble has to now power or strength in the act. It just sets the tone for the act. No matter what you put in the preamble it has no strength. You could say anything you want, but when it comes to the act itself it has no power. I think they are fooling people with this preamble thing. They were using (the preamble) to say 'this is what we want and this is what we are doing,' but the preamble can say anything it wants, it doesn't have the power. When they were wanting to put the Human Rights act in to it - that is where the power lies. The Human Rights act is a judicial system all to itself, you aide what it says and you can't appeal it. If they fine you, you have to pay and a lot of times you have to spend a lot of money to go to court and all that. The Human Rights commission does not have a very good record of human rights itself. Because certain people have rights and others don't depending on which side of the fence the human rights commission is on. That is a bad thing. I would never want to see that in the Education Act because it prevents people who are home schooled or private schooled from teaching what they believe in. I don't believe in teaching to hate anybody, that is a given. I don't hate anybody, I am here to serve everybody. I might not agree with their lifestyle or things like that but I still have to represent them. That freedom has to be there. I don't understand why the human rights commission would want to go in to a home that is homeschooling to check out exactly what they are teaching at that time. Homeschooling is not a classroom type of education. I definitely don't want to discourage homeschooling because I started with my wife 26 years ago and a lot of entrepreneurs came out of that movement and the government did studies on homeschooling and students were less likely to be on drugs and alcohol. That makes them better citizens. I'm glad the education act didn't go through with the human rights act in it. The preamble really doesn't have any power but they tried to make it sound like it did. And the Human Rights act should never really be in the education system.

Why should people vote for you?

I want to serve the public. I always believed the taxpayer, and the voter are the boss. I do not believe if somebody does not vote that they have no voice, because they still pay taxes. Everybody has a voice. My job is to be a representative to these people. If they have issues I want them to come to be and I will bring that up to caucus. If I am elected I want them to know that 'David is there to serve me, I am not there to serve David.' And that is the big thing that I am going on.

I am a servant, I am not the boss. That includes working with people, municipalities, cities, we are there to work together for the taxpayer. As an MLA I am still there to serve the way I have my whole life.